What Should You Do If You've Been Convicted Of A Federal Crime

If you or a loved one has been convicted in federal court, you may not know what to do. The shock of the jury's guilty verdict can be crushing.

Many people in that situation want to know what their options are if they are going to continue to fight at sentencing or in a federal criminal appeal.

In this short video, federal criminal defense attorney Matt Kaiser explains three things you should do if you, or a loved one, has been convicted of a federal crime in federal court.

If you, or someone you know, has been convicted of a federal crime, please watch this short video.

Video Transcript:

I talk to a number of people or the families of people who just got convicted at trial in federal court. They have just been convicted of a federal crime and they want to know what they should do immediately. There are three things someone should do.

First, start preparing for sentencing, the next thing that’s going to happen is you will have to go in front of a judge, it will be the same judge who did your trial and you will have to explain to that judge why you should get the lowest sentence possible. Sometimes after a trial when the result of the trial is a conviction, the person doesn’t want to go with the lawyer who handled the trial they want to find a new lawyer. If that’s you start that process now, find the new lawyer now.

Second, start preparing for the appeal, sometimes trial counsel will do the appeal, sometimes they don’t want to or something you don’t want them to. Start reaching out now to make a decision about who the lawyer should be in the appeal, the best thing you can do is the third thing which is to order the transcripts from the trial now. When the trial is going on, as a court reporter is recording everything but it takes some time for that court reporter to turn those notes into a transcript of everything that was said and everything that happened, your appeal can’t go forward until that transcript is prepared. So if you take this time and have the court reporter prepare those transcripts now it will speed up how quickly your appeal gets considered by the court of appeals.

After that start getting ready for the appeal so that when it comes you are prepared and you can have that process work as quickly and as smoothly as possible so that you have got the best chance you can of getting the conviction reversed.

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